TIME: Almanac of the 20th Century

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<text> <title> (1960s) Environment </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1960s Highlights </history> <link 07780> <link 07749> <link 06513> <link 06076> <link 00011> <link 00175><article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> Environment </hdr> <body> [American realized that the price they were paying for progress was the despoliation of their land, air and water, and founded a new movement to clean up the environment.] (September 28, 1962) Silent Spring (is) a new book by Rachel Carson, whose The Sea Around Us earned her a reputation not only as a competent marine biologist but as a graceful writer. The villains in Silent Spring are chemical pesticides, against which Miss Carson has taken up her pen in alarm and anger. Published this week, the book has already raised a swirl of controversy about the danger to man and wildlife of those modern chemical compounds that have vastly increased agricultural production, banished some diseases, and kept at bay the most bothersome and harmful of insects and rodents. There is no doubt about the impact of Silent Spring; it is a real shocker. Many unwary readers will be firmly convinced that most of the U.S.--with its animals, plants, soil, water and people--is already laced with poison that will soon start taking a dreadful toil, and that the only hope is to stop using chemical pesticides and let the age-old "balance of nature" take care of obnoxious insects. Scientists, physicians, and other technically informed people will also be shocked by Silent Springs--but for a different reason. They recognize Miss Carson's skill in building her frightening case; but they consider that case unfair, one-sided and hysterically overemphatic. (September 30, 1966) For 18 months, Lady Bird Johnson has been dashing about planting a tree here, dedicating a park or playground there, and cheering conservation-minded citizens everywhere. Of all the Great Society programs, beautification is the one closes to her heart, and future generations are likely to remember her for her campaign to beautify America. Though she is generally credited with inspiring the Highway Beautification Act of 1965 ("the Billboard Bill"), she has no official authority. The proper measure of her success is the grassroots response she evokes. From businessmen and mayors to garden-clubbers and oldtime conservationists, she is receiving a rousing chorus of "America the Beautiful"--or, more precisely, "America Must Be More Beautiful." (January 27, 1967) The unwholesome mess that U.S. citizens and corporations spew into that great sewer in the sky costs them dearly--$11 billion a year in property damage alone, according to the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Air pollutants abrade, corrode, tarnish, soil, erode, crack, weaken and discolor materials of all varieties. Steel corrodes from two to four times as fast in urban and industrial regions as in rural areas, where much less sulphur-bearing coal and oil are burned. The erosion of some stone statuary and buildings is also greatly speeded by high concentrations of sulphur oxides. Heavy fallout of pollution particles in metropolitan areas deposits layers of grime on automobiles, clothing, buildings and windows. Because of fly ash and soot from smoke-stacks, the main facade of Manhattan's New York Hilton was so badly discolored that it had to be replaced last year, only 3 1/2 years after the hotel was completed. Ozone, a principal component of photochemical smog, discolors and disintegrates clothing and causes rubber to become brittle and crack. Pollutants that injure plants and erode stone are likely to have a damaging effect on humans too. Ozone and PAN (peroxyacyl nitrate) produce the eye irritation, coughing and chest soreness experienced by many Los Angeles residents on smoggy days. In laboratory experiments, continuous exposure to ozone shortened the lives of guinea pigs. Scientists have also calculated that a child born in New York City after World War II has now inhaled the pollution equivalent of smoking nine cigarettes per day every day of his life. Like those in cigarettes, some of the hydrocarbons identified in automobile exhausts have produced cancer in laboratory animals. (February 14, 1969) The huge bubble of oil and natural gas boiling up from beneath the surface of Santa Barbara Channel at a rate of almost 1,000 gallons an hour spilled across the blue water for eleven days. It finally coated an area of at least 400 square miles and fouled 40 miles of incomparable beach front with acrid, tarlike slime. Sea life and birds suffered a sad fate. Cormorants and grebes dived into the oily swells for fish, most never to surface alive. All along the mucky shoreline, birds lay dead or dying, unable to raise their oil-soaked feathers. The fouled waters threatened thousands of rookeries on the Santa Barbara Islands, haven for the sea elephant, the Guadalupe fur seal (once thought extinct) and the rare sea otter. Almost as worrisome to conservationists were the chemical dropped from planes and boats to disperse and dissolve the slick. In 1967, when the Torrey Canyon--carrying crude--spilled 100,000 tons into the English Cannel, 90% of the animal loss was caused by detergents used to clean up the oil. By week's end, oil workers had managed to seal the well off Santa Barbara with concrete, making if finally as dead as the multitude of creatures, from sea urchins to seals, that it had doomed. Drilling will doubtless resume quickly, but it may take years before the ecological balance of Santa Barbara Bay is restored. </body> </article> </text>